The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2
Chapter 31

Part 6

"Huh. What are Mother and Father doing?" Helemia asked.

"They're preparing dinner, visiting with the others of the Command Group, and discussing today's exercises. They know that I'm always keeping an eye on you. Otherwise they'd never allow you to be by yourselves out here at your ages, even with your advanced abilities and with Stripe and Scout to guard you."

"What's gonna happen to Vanakit Lamitkeze?" she asked.

"The mind of Vanakit Lamitkeze is gone forever. You've wiped him clean. He'll need a week of physical recovery and Healing before he'll even be able to move, and then he'll need to learn everything all over again, including how to walk, how to speak and understand a language, how to feed himself, and how to dress himself. He'll be a new person."

"Huh. We might as well feed him to Karzog as a treat." she snickered.

"I think not." Quewanak chuckled. "I'll try to find someone suitable to deal with him, and if not I'll simply make him sleep and put him in storage until a suitable caretaker is found." "Why haven't you come by to see us before now, and why haven't our parents ever brought us to visit you?" Reggie inquired. "And why didn't anyone ever notice that they hadn't?"

"Your development has been as fast as is healthy for you, and you weren't yet ready to meet me." Quewanak said as he scratched under his chin. "For that matter, I wouldn't be taking this opportunity to get to know you if you weren't both psionicly exhausted. Like all psionicists, your subconscious gathers far more information than your conscious minds are aware of. And the shared subconscious psionic awareness that the two of you have is amazingly insidious. It's almost impossible to block completely; it just slowly and passively seeps into everything around it. Even I am not certain that I could block it completely if you weren't exhausted. And I have over one hundred and twenty million years of life experience. Accessing even a tiny fraction of my thoughts or memories would surely have a harmful effect on your minds. "And no one noticed because it was simply more convenient for me that way. I try not to affect the minds of others without their permission, but sometimes I don't notice it. I've developed some rather remarkable new abilities lately, and I'm still not entirely used to them. I'm sure you both can understand that."

"Ha! We sure can!" Helemia laughed. "And I want you to know that I wouldn't have faced death with dignity. I'd have been biting and scratching until the last second!"

"I believe you would have, little one." Quewanak chuckled.

"That was really no fun at the end of the fight when we realized we were going to lose." Reggie said, angry at the memory. "I don't want to take even a little chance that it could happen again. Who can give us the intensive psionic warfare training?"

"Ah, the question I've been waiting for!" the dragon grinned. "With your permission, I'll begin teaching you myself while you dream, the next time you and your parents are all deeply asleep. It should only take an hour per lesson, and you won't even remember it. You'll just know it happened, and you'll retain the training."

"Thank you." Helemia said as she and Reggie stood. "We should go home now, and tell our parents what we've been doing."

"Yes. But I want you to know something." Reggie told the dragon with a nasty little grin. "Now that I've thought about it for a while, I'm glad you don't treat us like babies just 'cause we're babies, like everyone else does."

"Thank you. I'll bid you goodnight then, and leave you by your house." Quewanak told them with a warm smile, and a moment later they were in their back yard, and he was gone.

When their parents heard what they'd experienced, Mark got so upset that he resorted to a Tranquility spell to steady his nerves, for the first time in many months.

As a mercy to their elders, the twins stayed close to home for the next week.

PART 7

On Thirdday of that week, Talia and Mark were out late helping build coastal fortifications on the east side of Hiliani.

Alilia stayed home with the babies, since she was eight and a half months pregnant. After the evening meal they curled up on one of the Mark-sized sofas for a nap, but didn't sleep. They stayed relaxed and cuddled up together for over an hour anyway.

Then Alilia softly spoke. "I wish my daughter was like you. You had already contacted Talia two months earlier in her pregnancy than this, and it was so beautiful Linking with you then. I've tried to contact her myself, but I can't."

"We can feel her mind, but we haven't really contacted her, and she can't initiate contact with anyone else yet." Reggie told her. "She's not like us. I think she'd have to have a twin to be like us. But we could help her just a little bit, and then we could Link with her, and then you could Link with her through us."

"Ah, sweet gods but that would be beautiful!" Alilia sighed. "But what changes would you have to make in her, and how sure are you of the safety of the work?"

"Well look; this is our psionic sense of her." Helemia explained as she deepened the Link. "See this part? This is her psionic senses. It's still sleeping, kind of, and it doesn't have enough... energy, I guess you'd say, to wake up. So we'd put a little energy in there; it'd look like this, see? You see how that part of her would then be like everyone else who uses psionics? It's pretty safe, it'd only take a little bit of energy, and we've thought about it a lot. We didn't think you'd let us mess with her mind, so we didn't ask. But we can do it."

"Hmm. Show that to me again from beginning to end, and slow it down to about a quarter, and give me more detail." Alilia asked.

The twins complied. "It wouldn't be a permanent change." Reggie explained as Alilia experienced their simulation. "As soon as we stop putting the energy in, she won't be able to do it anymore. Until she grows enough to be able to do it on her own, anyway. But if we do this for her a lot, I bet she'll be able to do it by herself a lot sooner."

"That's amazing. And brilliant." Alilia quietly marveled, her eyes closed as she concentrated on what they were showing her. "The precision of it is... chilling, actually. However did you think of this?"

"The technique of it is a psionic attack that Quewanak showed us." Helemia casually informed her. "When you're doing it to attack someone, you put a whole lot of energy in there, and it burns our their psionic senses. But we're only gonna put such a little bit there, it would take ten times as much to hurt her at all. She just needs a little spark in the right place, so this connection here can work, see?"

"Amazing." Alilia breathed, and found herself torn between caution and yearning.

"We promise we won't hurt her, Aunt Alilia." the twins told her.

Alilia heaved a sigh, and nodded. "All right. Do it as slowly and as carefully as you can, and we'll monitor her well-being as carefully as we can while you do it."

"Okay. Here we go." Helemia nodded.

A few moments later, Reggie reported; "Okay, it worked, we have her. Wow! Hello Valentia, you're gonna be..."

Suddenly he cracked up laughing so thoroughly that he could no longer form words, not even psionicly.

"What is it?!" Alilia asked in worried confusion.

"We'll tell you later.” Helemia told her with a snicker. "Get ready, we're gonna Link her with you. Got it?"

"I have her!" Alilia marveled, smiling with wondrous joy and closed eyes as she caressed her tummy. "Oh, my sweet darling, it's so beautiful to meet you! I love you so much, my beautiful baby!" "She likes it, but she's getting confused." Helemia reported. "There's too many of us for her. Take a firm but gentle grip on the Link, and we'll back out of it. We'll just keep giving her the energy. "There. Do you still have her?"

"I do! Oh thank you, thank you so much!" Alilia smiled.

"You're welcome, Aunt Alilia." Reggie giggled. "We love you a lot. Valentia too."

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